Category: Health Data

Jodi Yeats reports: A data breach in Auckland’s controversial regional lab tests repository has confirmed health sector fears about regional databases. A phone call from a patient in late May alerted Auckland regional DHBs to privacy breaches in Auckland’s controversial regional community laboratory results repository, TestSafe, affecting 150 patients. The patient was attending an outpatient…

This is a follow-up on a story covered previously. A former Cedars-Sinai Medical Center employee was sentenced to four years, eight months in prison after pleading guilty today to stealing patient information to defraud insurance companies of $354,000. The hospital had sent letters in December to more than 1,000 patients, warning them that their personal…

Amanda Baumfeld of the San Gabriel Valley Tribune reports: When stories about hospital privacy breaches turn into lawsuits, there’s usually a celebrity name attached. Britney Spears, Farrah Fawcett and Nadya Suleman have all claimed medical staffs snooped through their confidential records. But celebrities aren’t the only ones alleging violation of their privacy. A second- grade…

Meanwhile, over in the UK: The government has blocked proposals for it to collect and publish data on all NHS security breaches, GP can reveal. In a letter to ministers, written last year and released under the Freedom of Information Act, DoH director of IT implementation Richard Jeavons argued that disciplining offences was the ‘responsibility…

Walecia Konrad of the New York Times reports: Brandon Sharp, a 37-year-old manager at an oil and gas company in Houston, has never had any real health problems and, luckily, he has never stepped foot in an emergency room. So imagine his surprise a few years ago when he learned he owed thousands of dollars…